The Misguided Ghost of a Man
by dreamsweetmydear
Summary: Gibbs sees the shell of a broken mind, and knows the real man lurks somwhere deep inside. ::For the Stockholm Syndrome and Eyes Wide Open/Shut challenges at the NFA Forums.::


**From the author's desk: **I've been up all night writing this. Yikes!

Anyway, this is my entry for the **Eyes Wide Open/Shut **and **Stockholm Syndrome** challenges over at the NFA Forums. Both looked super interesting, and I really wanted to write something for them. Not to mention, this idea seemed to fit.

I've unfortunately gotten into a rut where I find I have trouble writing unless I can think of a way to tie up any and all loose threads. I forget that sometimes loose threads are okay as long as they don't interfere with the main part of the story I'm trying to tell. So with this one, I just sort of jumped right into it and said "To hell with it all!" with the loose threads.

Please tell me what you think! Constructive criticism is very, VERY much appreciated. If you think I should change something, tell me! I want to know!

**Disclaimer:** _NCIS_ and its characters belong to Donald P. Bellisario. I'm just having some fun with them. The title draws inspiration from Paramore's song "Misguided Ghosts."

**Warning!:** There are slight references to crucifixion in this story. If that bothers you, please turn back now.

**Note:** The above does not reflect my personal thoughts on Christian religious symbols.

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_**The Misguided Ghost of a Man**_**  
by **_**dreamsweetmydear**_

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"**In violence we forget who we are." - Mary McCarthy**

**00**

One day, an NCIS agent went missing without much of a trace, or much of a reason. The only clue was his car, left in the parking lot at the Navy Yard. None of his personal items were missing—in fact, the investigating agents found their abducted teammate's badge, gun, and personal items locked in his car, on the driver's seat.

Video footage from the entry gate showed a small black car leaving the Navy Yard, the missing agent sitting next to a partially open window in the backseat behind the driver, whose face couldn't be seen due to the tinted glass of his rolled up, driver's side window.

The investigating team tracked down the car by license plate as a stolen vehicle, and it was eventually found, parked on the side of a highway. There was little to glean from the car that was helpful—only evidence that the missing agent was there, along with a set of fingerprints and some hairs and fibers belonging to the kidnapper.

A BOLO was put out for the missing agent, and "Have You Seen This Person?" bulletins were sent out nationwide. Among the hundreds of false leads, gradually the missing agent's trail and the kidnapper's identity was put together through the testimonies of several drivers with sharp memories of the passengers they either picked up or helped with a few dollars.

The testimonies reassured the teammates of the missing agent that he seemed all right, if a little jumpy. They said the other man—the kidnapper—was perfectly polite and friendly, and simply seemed a little stressed at the apparent breakdown of his rental car.

It was slim, but they hoped that when they found him, he would still be all right.

He was missing for four months when they found him, finally tracking him down to a small, out-of-the-way town in New York.

The room he was in was small—an 8-foot-by-8-foot stone cellar—and freezing. They found him shackled and hanging from one of the walls, and covered in multiple injuries. His skin was peppered in multicolored bruises, burns fresh and old, partially healed scrapes, and gaping, weeping, infected gashes. Improperly healed broken bones poke out in odd angles. He was dangerously thin, his cheeks hollow, limbs skeletal. Limp, stringy strands of brown hair hung from his head and fell into his face, which lolled gently to one side.

It was a horrendous, disgusting caricature of a holy symbol.

The worst part was the blank, wide-eyed stare. His eyes, once so vibrant and full of intelligence, were wide and dull, the white of the eyeball visible around the edge of the iris.

When they said his name, he didn't respond. He simply continued to look forward silently, eyes trained on the opposite wall, where a large television screen played a video loop with a single message over and over again:

_You are alone.  
You are no one.  
You are nothing.  
You do not belong.  
You are not loved.  
You do not matter.  
You are worthless.  
You are not wanted.  
You are garbage.  
You are stupid._

_You don't deserve your name._

_Do as Ryan tells you.  
Make Ryan happy.  
You will have a friend,  
a brother in Ryan._

_You are alone…_

Gibbs had to restrain DiNozzo from breaking the TV with a fist or a bullet to the screen.

"It won't help him," the supervisory agent whispered to his first in command.

The senior field agent answered with silence—a sure sign how much this scene was affecting him—but Gibbs could see as he visibly tried to relax himself.

David was another story entirely. She couldn't take her eyes off the shadow of the man trapped on the slimy cellar wall. It was an odd juxtaposition, and one Gibbs didn't have the words to address. The most he could do was tap her on the shoulder to bring her back to the task at hand.

As they waited for the paramedics to arrive, they got to work, doing their best to be gentle while also trying to quickly disengage the tortured man in front of them from the wall he was secured to, agents from the local NCIS office collecting evidence upstairs.

They worked in silence, collecting swabs of blood from the wall, taking photographs of the scene, and let the paramedics do their jobs when they arrived. Once they had their patient secured and ready for transport, they wheeled him out to the Medevac chopper for the flight to the nearest hospital.

Their perp was already on the long journey back to NCIS Headquarters in D.C., in the capable hands of Agent Carson and her team, in a separate chopper. Gibbs tossed the keys to the car to DiNozzo before climbing into the Medevac chopper, trusting the two of them to finish gathering the evidence before heading back.

The next time he would see them would be at the hospital.

As the door to the chopper was slammed shut, Gibbs turned his attention back to the man lying strapped down in the gurney in front of him.

He watched as the vacant green eyes blinked in response to the sedative the paramedics gave him. He placed his hand on the younger man's head in a fatherly gesture.

"It's all right, McGee. You're safe now. Go to sleep."

Gibbs couldn't help the pang of pained disappointment that shot through him at the lack of response to the name.

The man blinked once more before his eyes closed in drugged sleep.

Gibbs wanted to break something.

Physically, the man lying on the gurney was NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee.

Mentally, though, Gibbs wasn't so sure.

He could only hope that the brilliant young man that Gibbs knew and remembered was hiding somewhere in the husk of a human being that lay in front of him.

Upon reaching the closest trauma center, Gibbs helped the paramedics unload McGee's gurney, and walked with the nurses and doctors as far as the double doors that separated the examination and operating rooms from the waiting area.

With nothing to do, Gibbs sat in a chair, waiting for news about his agent or the rest of his team to arrive, whichever happened first.

He did his best to ignore the crucifix that hung on the wall on the other side of the waiting room.

The similarity in the image of the wooden carving and the state his man was in when his team found him was simply too much.

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A month passed, and Gibbs and his team watched as the man who was Timothy McGee began to recover. It was slow going, but the gashes were stitched and cleaned of infection. The scrapes were healed up. The bruises were faded. The burns were healing. Badly broken bones had been reset. A regimen of antibiotics and other medications flooded his system, working to fix the damage done to him in his prison.

And with the nutrients being returned to his body, the hollows in his cheeks began to disappear, and his limbs became defined by muscle again instead of bones and joints.

Every now and then there was an alertness in his gaze that hadn't been there when they found him first, but often that alertness was accompanied by a mixture of caution and worry.

It was a day when Gibbs had come to sit with McGee when something seemed to shift.

Usually when Gibbs sat with McGee, Gibbs didn't talk to the catatonic man. Not because he felt like talking was a waste of time—he was a bastard, but not that much of one—but more because he had no idea what to say to him.

So he simply sat, usually with some sort magazine or book about boating or woodworking. An occasional novel if he could find one that caught his interest.

Gibbs had been reading for about forty minutes and was going for a sip of his coffee when he looked up and saw McGee sitting in bed and staring at him, eyes bright with alertness and a wary expression on his face.

"Something on your mind, McGee?" Gibbs figured it was a simple, general enough question to start a conversation with.

But he most definitely wasn't expecting the answer he got.

"I'm not called McGee. I don't deserve that name." The younger man fell quiet again.

Then, "Where's Ryan?"

Gibbs put his cup down on the side table next to the bed before he dropped the cup and spilled it. Stalling for time, he closed his book and carefully put it on the table next to his coffee.

Then he looked into the green eyes he thought he knew, trying to understand the wariness he saw in them instead of the trust he could still remember seeing five months ago.

McGee was becoming agitated, and looking slowly around again. "Where's Ryan? Why isn't he here?"

"McGee…"

"Don't call me that. I'm not allowed to be called that. Where's my friend?"

Gibbs paused, working to make his voice as neutral as possible. "Your friend?"

"Ryan. He's my friend. He's…he's all I have. If-if he's not here, then…then that means…" McGee was starting to panic, and the numbers on the monitors were starting to go up rapidly.

"Whoa, calm down. You need to stay calm," Gibbs tried to soothe the younger man, keeping an eye on the monitor. "Take a few deep breaths. Nice and slow."

He watched McGee take slow, deep breaths, hearing the beeping on the monitor begin to calm with him.

"Now, what does it mean if Ryan isn't here?" Gibbs asked, needing to know what his agent had been convinced to think, but not wanting to believe what he was hearing.

"If Ryan isn't here, then it means I did something wrong," McGee told him, eyes fearful. "It means he's angry at me. He told me…he told me I was his best friend, his brother. That brothers don't do things to make each other angry, and always stick together. If…if he's not here…it means he's angry, it means I'm not his best friend anymore. I did something wrong. But…what did I do?"

Gibbs wasn't prepared for the desperate grip that took hold of his arm, or the urgency and fear he saw in the familiar green eyes of his agent.

"Please! You have to find him! You have to tell him that I don't know what I did! Please tell him not be angry at me! I'll be a good friend, I promise! Please tell him not to be mad at me!"

"What happens when Ryan is angry, Tim?" Gibbs asked softly.

Gibbs watched as McGee's eyes widened and face paled. The hand gripping Gibbs' arm tightened and began to shake.

"Tim, what happens when Ryan is angry?" he asked again, keeping his voice quiet.

McGee shook his head violently, squeezing his eyes shut, unable to speak. "Please tell him not to be mad," the younger man begged, the abject terror in his voice stabbing at Gibbs' like a thousand knives. Even more painful was the childlike quality that had taken over his voice. Gibbs suddenly felt like he was hearing a little boy speak instead of man. "I'll be a good friend, I will. Please tell him I don't know what I did. He's my best friend, really he is. I know he cares about me. It's why he took such good care of me. He wouldn't do it for anyone else but me. He loves me. I'm his little brother. Please tell him I'm sorry. Please…" McGee's voice trailed off into silent, fervent begging, his grip slackening from Gibbs' arm as his strength began to wane.

The father in Gibbs couldn't resist the urge to comfort the distraught young man in front of him. "Shh… It's all right. Ryan won't be mad. I'll talk to him."

Gibbs' hand moved to the top of McGee's head, gentle smoothing his hair as McGee's eyes drooped shut, quiet pleas for Ryan's mercy still falling from his lips as he fell asleep.

Once he was sure McGee was asleep, Gibbs stepped out of the room, hitting the speed dial for Ducky as he went.

"Donald Mallard speaking," the Scotsman's cheerful brogue came through the phone.

"Ducky, I'm going to need you to track down the best psychiatrist you can think of."

"Oh Jethro! I assume that this is about Timothy." Gibbs noted the immediate shift to seriousness in the older man's voice. "Has he finally spoken?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

Gibbs sighed. "And he's wondering where his best friend Ryan is, and says that he wouldn't have been taken care of so well if Ryan didn't care for him like a little brother."

"Oh dear."

"He begged me to tell Ryan not to be angry at him."

Gibbs could hear the ache and the weariness in Ducky's voice when he answered. "The poor lad. I'll make some calls, Jethro. I'm sure if none of my colleagues can help, they can at least give me a suggestion."

"Thanks Duck."

"Nonsense! There are no thanks necessary. I care about that young man just as much as the rest of you youngsters."

"Yeah, Ducky. I know."

"Hang in there, Jethro. I'm sure our Timothy will come back to us yet."

"That's what I'm hoping for," Gibbs whispered, turning to go back to McGee's room. "I'll talk to you later."

Hanging up, Gibbs stepped back into the room to retake his seat, pausing to study to frail young man sleeping in the bed. His hair had been trimmed to something more akin to how he would normally wear it, his cheekbones were becoming less pronounced, and Gibbs could see the rapid movement of McGee's eyes behind his eyelids as he dreamed.

Gibbs was sure that somewhere in the mind of this cautious, scared young man, the real Timothy McGee was lurking in the shadows. He just needed to be convinced that it was okay to come back out, that he didn't have to be afraid of Ryan Duvall anymore.

But for now, Gibbs would settle for keeping the younger man company as he slowly recovered. He'd taken the crucial first step today by speaking for the first time since they had found him.

Gibbs would make sure he was there whenever McGee decided he wanted to talk again.

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**-END-**


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